His First and Last (Ardent Springs #1) by Terri Osburn Read Free Book Online

then she realized something. Why should Spencer get to ask all the questions?
    “What about you?”
    “What about me?” he answered around the three fries he’d shoved into his mouth.
    “You live above the garage at Granny’s. Is that your dream? Working construction and catering to an old lady?”
    Pointing at her with a fry, Spencer said, “Rosie would have your hide if she heard you call her that.” Then he ate the fry and wiped his hands on a napkin. Lorelei continued to stare, letting him know she expected an answer. “I don’t work construction,” he finally said. “I’m a carpenter, and I’ve taken some architecture classes. I hope to take more.”
    That she did not see coming.
    “Really? An architect?”
    “Don’t act so surprised,” he said. “Rosie told you I was helping with the plans to renovate the theater. Did you think they let any old construction worker do that?”
    “I guess I didn’t think much about it.” Lorelei pictured architects as guys in suits in fancy, big-city offices. Not her old boyfriend who was still sporting T-shirts and a cowboy hat.
    “Because we’re a bunch of small-town hicks, our project wouldn’t be professional?”
    That was exactly how she’d thought of the Ruby project. Dismissing it as small-town and therefore small-time. Yet more faulty thinking on her part.
    Not ready or willing to talk about her own misperceptions, she asked, “What do you want to do with the classes? Are you getting a degree?”
    “That’s the plan. But I’m taking it slow since I have to balance the classes around my work and helping Rosie around the house.” He took a long draw of his milkshake before adding, “I’m also thinking about going into city planning. Nashville is expanding north, and we’re close enough to attract those willing to commute. Ardent Springs could see serious expansion in the next five to ten years.”
    Lorelei had hit her limit of unexpected information. First, Spencer was working on a college degree. Then Ardent Springs as a suburb of Nashville? Their dinky little town expanding? And Spencer playing a role in that expansion?
    “Wow,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Again with the surprise.” Spencer lifted his burger. “Don’t you remember my obsession with old barns back in high school?”
    “What do old barns have to do with any of this?”
    “That was the beginning of it,” he said, after swallowing a bite of burger and wiping his mouth. “I was fascinated by their simplicity and endurance. Then I progressed to churches, and eventually I did research on the old courthouse. Who built it. When. How they managed things back in the late eighteen hundreds, without the benefit of trucks, dozers, and cranes.”
    Without thinking, Lorelei swiped a spot of mayonnaise from the corner of Spencer’s mouth with her finger. She froze, realizing what she’d done. As if a single second hadn’t passed since they’d been together, happy and in love.
    Wiping her finger on her napkin, Lorelei cleared her throat and asked, “How did they get the clock tower up there?”
    Spencer didn’t comment on her gesture, but his brown eyes danced as he answered, “The wings and tower weren’t added until 1929, so they had more machinery by then.” Swirling the straw in his glass, he added, “My research eventually led me to look into architecture programs, and now here I am. A college student at the ripe old age of thirty.”
    This was too important to let him make light. “This is a big deal, Spencer. I’m proud of you.”
    Lorelei had never doubted Spencer could do anything he set his mind to. She’d just been too self-involved to think about how far he might want to go. His reluctance to leave Ardent Springs felt like a lack of ambition to her wandering heart. Clearly, that assumption had been wrong.
    In fact, the list of things she’d been wrong about was getting longer by the minute.
    Leaning against the red vinyl behind him, Spencer